Beware the coming new ice age....

Beware the coming new ice age....

CLIMATE change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from
freezing.

They have found that one of the engines driving the Gulf Stream the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea has weakened to less than a
quarter of its former strength.

The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades. Paradoxically, it
could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures.

Such a change has long been predicted by scientists but the new research is among the first to show clear experimental evidence of the phenomenon.

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, hitched rides under the Arctic ice cap in Royal Navy submarines and used ships to
take measurements across the Greenland Sea.

... Quote:

Until recently we would find giant chimneys in the sea
where columns of cold, dense water were sinking from the surface to the seabed 3,000 metres below, but now they have almost disappeared.

As the water sank it was replaced by warm water flowing in from the south, which kept the circulation going. If that mechanism is slowing, it will
mean less heat reaching Europe.

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Such a change could have a severe impact on Britain, which lies on the same latitude as Siberia and ought to be much colder. The Gulf Stream
transports 27,000 times more heat to British shores than all the nations power supplies could provide, warming Britain by 5-8C.

Wadhams and his colleagues believe, however, that just such changes could be well under way. They predict that the slowing of the Gulf Stream is
likely to be accompanied by other effects, such as the complete summer melting of the Arctic ice cap by as early as 2020 and almost certainly by 2080.
This would spell disaster for Arctic wildlife such as the polar bear, which could face extinction.

Wadhamss submarine journeys took him under the North Polar ice cap, using sonar to survey the ice from underneath. He has measured how the ice has
become 46% thinner over the past 20 years. The results from these surveys prompted him to focus on a feature called the Odden ice shelf, which should
grow out into the Greenland Sea every winter and recede in summer.

The growth of this shelf should trigger the annual formation of the sinking water columns. As sea water freezes to form the shelf, the ice crystals
expel their salt into the surrounding water, making it heavier than the water below.

However, the Odden ice shelf has stopped forming. It last appeared in full in 1997. In the past we could see nine to 12 giant columns forming under
the shelf each year. In our latest cruise, we found only two and they were so weak that the sinking water could not reach the seabed, said Wadhams,
who disclosed the findings at a meeting of the European Geosciences Union in Vienna.

The exact effect of such changes is hard to predict because currents and weather systems take years to respond and because there are two other areas
around the north Atlantic where water sinks, helping to maintain circulation. Less is known about how climate change is affecting these.

However, Wadhams suggests the effect could be dramatic.

... Quote:

One of the frightening things in the film The Day After Tomorrow showed how the circulation in the Atlantic Ocean is upset
because the sinking of cold water in the north Atlantic suddenly stops.

The sinking is stopping, albeit much more slowly than in the film over years rather than a few days. If it continues, the effect will be to cool the
climate of northern Europe.

One possibility is that Europe will freeze; another is that the slowing of the Gulf Stream may keep Europe cool as global warming heats the rest of
the world but with more extremes of weather.

By netchicken:
posted on 9-6-2005

More on the topic....

http://apnews.myway.com/art...
ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland (AP) - Ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic hit an all-time high last year, raising concerns about the effects of global
warming on one of the most sensitive and productive ecosystems in the world.

Sea ice off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador was below normal for the tenth consecutive year and the water temperature outside St. John's
Harbor was the highest on record in 2004, according to a report released Wednesday by the federal Fisheries Department.

The ocean surface off St. John's averaged almost two degrees Fahrenheit above normal, the highest in the 59 years the department has been compiling
records.

And bottom temperatures were also one degree higher than normal, according the report.

"A two-degree temperature anomaly on the Grand Banks is pretty significant in the bottom areas, where temperatures only range a couple of degrees
throughout the year," said Eugene Colbourne, an oceanographer with the Fisheries Department.

Water temperatures were above normal right across the North Atlantic last year, from Newfoundland to Greenland, Iceland and Norway.

The Newfoundland data is another wake-up call on climate change, say environmentalists.

Anchorage, Alaska, has seen annual snowfall shrink in the past decade, high river temperatures are killing off millions of spawning salmon in British
Columbia and northern climates around the world have noticed warming.

Meanwhile, ocean temperatures have risen around the globe, and species are already dying, said Bill Wareham, acting director of marine conservation
for the Vancouver-based David Suzuki Foundation.